The new founders America needs

6. To be a founder means to defend witches.

Good people right now are being scapegoated. They are being burned as witches, judged based on their worst moment and hung out to dry because of a mistake or a bad joke or a bad thought or a lapse in judgment.

David Sabatani, one of the most important scientists in the country, is now collecting unemployment because of unverified claims of sexual misconduct. Feminist philosophy professor Kathleen Stock was pushed out of the University of Sussex because her research on sex and gender offended some students. Joshua Katz was smeared as a racist by Princeton for speaking out against radical “anti-racist” measures such as institutionalized struggle sessions and race-based compensation for professors—until he was finally fired. I could go on and on and on.

It is appalling, illiberal, and morally wrong. And yet too often too many of us stay silent.

Including me.

Here’s what I mean: The issue of gender ideology is one I did not want to touch. I was scared, sure. But also I didn’t think it was worth it. I didn’t think it was even my issue. Let other people handle it.

And so I watched from the sidelines as women like Abigail Shrier and J.K. Rowling said wild things like: Hey, biological men and biological women probably shouldn’t share a prison cell. Or maybe a 15-year-old is too young to decide on her own sterilization. These women weren’t thrown on a pyre but they were humiliated. They were threatened and slandered. It’s easy to see this happen and say: I am not touching that with a ten-foot pole.